Continuing my attempt to prove game developers are not gods, but rather people like you and me with really cool, albeit stressful jobs, today I'm talking with Rich Fleider of Rogue Entertainment. Rich Fleider certainly has an interesting background and seems to take his job in stride with a level head. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Rich about his job, past experience and how he manages to deal with being both a Vice President of a gaming company and the Lead 2d Artist as well. It is amazing what can happen when a buddy you work with at McDonald's says 'I want to make a shareware video game...'

Sharky Games: It just might be possible that some readers may not know about Rogue Entertainment. Can you tell us a bit about the company, and how long you have been there?

Rich Fleider: Jim Molinets, Steve Maines and I founded Rogue Entertainment in 1994. Previously headquartered in Mesquite, Texas, right next to id, we quickly became one of their first choices whenever they needed a mission pack or port. We did the second mission packs for both Quake I and II ("Dissolution of Eternity" and "Ground Zero" respectively) and the N64 version of Quake II. This allowed us to slowly expand our company and gain valuable experience while building our name within the gaming community. Now we are able to take on "American McGee's Alice".

Over the years we've had some setbacks too. Our first publisher went bankrupt shortly after our first title, "Strife", hit the shelves (revenues from "Strife" kept them afloat for several months but it was a lost cause) and another title was unfortunately canceled after we had been working on it for six months. Despite (or perhaps because of) all that, we've been able to gather and maintain a stable team of almost 30 extremely talented and dedicated employees.